Convenience and flexibility of digital photography has resulted in its increasing popularity. Digital cameras produce photographic images in a digital format that are easily saved to a personal computer or other type of information handling system. The digital images can be transmitted using common communication techniques to a wide variety of destinations. The increasing availability of inexpensive scanners allows users to scan print photographs into the digital format for communication to an information handling system for storage. The digital photographic images can be viewed on a display connected to the information handling system, and transmitted by electronic mail or other communication techniques to other destinations for viewing by another user.
One of the most convenient aspects of digital photography is the capability to easily capture photographic images and transmit the images to multiple various destinations with little bother or handling. Conventional photography normally entails capture of images on a full roll of film, developing of the film with an inherent delay until the images become available, and communication of the images by slow techniques such as mailing or transporting the images. Digital photography allows capture of individual images, docking of the camera to a communication interface, and transmission of the images from the interface for transmission to a large number of diverse destinations for display or storage.
The flexibility of digital photography with an abundance of possible usages, destinations, providers, and facilities available for digital camera users creates a need for manageable methods to facilitate communication of images among multiple users. In fact, although digital cameras are highly simple and efficient to use, difficulty arises in transferring the images to the various destinations. Image transfer entails downloading the images to a computer and calling various special-purpose programs to control transfer.
What is needed is a system and method that simplifies and expands the communication of image data from a device such as a digital camera or scanner to a myriad of various digital image destinations.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, an intent file describes an intent that is set on an image acquisition device such as a camera or scanner, or set on a computer, workstation, personal computer, or web site. The image intent file can be created by operation of a device such as the image acquisition device, stored in a storage device of an information handling system, and transferred to various devices in the information handling system. The intent file complies with a markup language grammar structure that emulates the physical structure of a camera or scanner. The image intent file associates an image with the acquisition device and associates an intent with the image. The structure of the intent file specifies the physical structure of the camera or scanner. A profile describes and creates a base architecture for creating and executing intent on the image acquisition device (camera or scanner), personal computer, or web site. The image intent file specifies intent specific to a particular image contained in the image acquisition device memory.
The profile and intent file map the physical structure of a camera or scanner using data structures that are easily extensible and modular, facilitating adaptation to future technologies, and simplifying debug and modification.
In an illustrative embodiment, the intent file complies with eXtensible Markup Language (XML) standards that are widely used on the Internet so that devices compliant with industry standard can parse the intent file.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the image intent file is easily extensible to exploit future technological advances that can be simply added to the image intent file and profile. In one example, when a successful web TV wireless upload becomes available, the web TV destination can be added to a list of share options for the image acquisition device. Extensibility to future technologies is device-specific (camera or scanner-specific).
The technique for setting intent for an image acquisition system that includes, for example, a digital camera or scanner, facilitates extension to technologies that are predefined and difficult to change. The image intent is sufficiently generic that the simple adding of a new tag enables new destinations without compromising any existing systems. Addition of new tags is functionally independent of any existing tags.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, intent is honored by distributed intent. Intent is the act of marking images or files with a distribution destination. Examples of destinations include e-mail, print, post to web, and the like.
Intent is fulfilled by a specific service and medium while not affecting the remaining intent specified in the intent file. Thus intent is executed through multiple media and services independently. In one example, if intent is associated to an object such as email to xe2x80x9cmomxe2x80x9d and post to xe2x80x9cweb TVxe2x80x9d, the email intent is fulfilled by connecting the device (the camera) into a telephone jack while maintaining the post-to-web TV intent specific to the object. At an indefinite later time, wireless transfer can execute the post-to-web TV. The distribution of intent permits the user to fulfill a portion of the intent when convenient, without disturbing other items of intent. The illustrative system organizes the intent and distributes the intent to different devices while maintaining any unfulfilled intent.